Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Preliminary Material -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Investigating dms from an Adaptive Perspective -- 3 Identifying Adaptive Pressures -- 4 Identifying Pre-existing Solutions (Part 1): The Interpretive Problem -- 5 Identifying Pre-existing Solutions (Part 2): The Exclusion Problem -- 6 Identifying Pre-existing Solution (Part 3): The Interference Problem and the Initial Situation Construction Problem -- 7 dms’ Capacity to Influence Interpretation -- 8 The Acquisition Issue -- Bibliography -- Subject Index -- Author Index.

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From a Darwinian perspective, language is rooted in our neurobiology, and the process whereby interpretation is reached – in the case of argumentative sequences – is not dissimilar to that underlying action selection in response to environmental change: indeed, it arguably involves the same type of decision-making (Damasio 1994). Context construction, as construed by Nyan, corresponds to the preliminary stage of decision-making, when the changed environment needs to be categorised. What discourse markers contribute to context construction is an upgraded level of automation, whereby the degree of variation assumed to be present in the interlocutor’s processing context can be brought within a manageable range. How discourse markers influence interpretation is construed in terms of Damasio’s (2010) convergence-and-divergence zone framework.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on September 15, 2016).